The Winter Road Read online

  “On your own today?” Emily took a handful of pods and began to snap them open. The rest of the family had gone to the lake, a half-hour’s drive away.

  “A cool kitchen sounded better to me than a hot beach.”

  “To Mom, too.”

  “And you?”

  “I don’t mind a chance to catch my breath.” Since the beginning of June she’d been going full tilt, helping with wedding plans at home, Field Day and Awards Day at school and doing inventory for the library. She’d closed it the previous week, around the time dress fittings and dainty making had mutated from cousinly togetherness to near panic.

  She reached for more pea pods and began to tell her grandmother about her concern for Daniel.

  “There couldn’t have been anyone missing,” Eleanor said at first. “The church was bursting.” She looked out the window as if trying to visualize the crowd of guests. “Come to think of it, I didn’t speak to Daniel at all yesterday. He must have been here. He left a gift.”

  Emily had seen the package on the gift table, too. Even without his signature on the card she would have recognized the sometimes ornate, always measured letters that reminded her of his age when nothing else did. “Maybe someone dropped it off for him.”

  “Wouldn’t that suggest he made plans to be away?”

  “I suppose it would. Am I fussing?”

  “You?”

  Emily laughed. “That’s the thing about worrying. It’s hard to know when it’s reasonable.”

  “I do understand. What woman wouldn’t? Learned or instinct, we tend to take care of people. School’s out, my dear. We’ve finally got Elizabeth and Jack married and on their way. Isn’t it time to relax and enjoy the summer?”

  “Mrs. Bowen mentioned a hammock.”

  “What a good idea. Get yourself a hammock and a pile of books and don’t budge for a month. Who knows, maybe your mother will notice the dust and take care of it herself!”

  Emily couldn’t help smiling at the thought of her mother minding dust that settled anywhere but on her books.

  “Don’t forget,” Eleanor went on, “tea tomorrow afternoon.” Because of the reception and a barbecue planned for later in the week the family wasn’t getting together for the usual Sunday dinner.

  “I’m looking forward to it.”

  “It’s only you and your mother, and Susannah and Edith and me. I’ve already told Julia that, but remind her, won’t you, Emily?”

  “I don’t think she’ll come, Grandma.”

  “No, I don’t suppose she will.”

  THE COOKBOOKS WERE put away. Julia sat at the kitchen table, this time bent over one of her book catalogs. Emily could see she wasn’t reading it. Her neck and shoulders looked tight and her arms were pressed to her sides, elbows digging in.

  “You said you wouldn’t be long.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom.” She put the bananas in the fruit basket, the hydro bill on the hutch and the new catalog on the table.

  Her mother ignored it. “If you don’t mean ‘not long’ you shouldn’t say ‘not long.’”

  “I meant it at the time. Did you worry?”

  “I didn’t know I’d have to make lunch. I waited.”

  Emily went to the fridge and took out jars of mayonnaise, mustard and pickles, a tomato and their share of the leftover wedding ham.

  “Then you still didn’t come. So I had a sandwich.”

  “You did?” She put everything but the ham back. “You’re ahead of the game. I haven’t eaten yet.”

  “I don’t know why you call it a game.”

  “Come on, Mom. You do so. It’s an expression.”

  “An odd one.”

  Emily cut a slice of ham, then leaned against the counter while she ate it. “Daniel wasn’t home.”

  “You see?”

  “I sure do. You said he didn’t fall.”

  “And he didn’t.”

  “Nobody knows where he is, though. Everybody says he likes to follow his inclinations, and if that means a missed wedding or a dried-up garden, so be it.”

  Julia looked at Emily’s feet. “His garden dried up?”

  That small reaction was more effective than all the reassurance from Daniel’s friends. “It’s strange, isn’t it? And his house plants are half dead. Mrs. Bowen said that’s not like him.”

  Julia picked up a pencil and leaned closer to her catalog, her brief interest withdrawn. Emily watched her drift further away, pencil eraser to her lip, finger following the text. Every now and then she marked a title with a star. That meant interested, but not sure. Her library was huge and always growing. Fiction and nonfiction, painstakingly organized, filled floor-to-ceiling shelves on every wall of the living room.

  When her mother began circling titles—the next step toward a decision—with the air of someone who was alone in the room, Emily put away the meat and washed the knife, then went outside again. This time the cat followed.

  They crossed the crisp, brown lawn and the road, went down one side of the ditch, then up the other and through a narrow band of trees to the creek.

  It was low this year. If the heat continued it might dry up completely. The water still bubbled along, though, over smooth, round stones. Emily took off her sandals and waded in, the warm water ankle-deep and cool against her skin.

  The cat was still with her. It trotted along the bank, pouncing at rustling sounds, then rushing to catch up. Ahead of it, a red-winged blackbird flitted from grass tip to grass tip. Emily listened to the bird’s piping song and wished for a breeze to cool her head, hot under heavy hair.

  “The thing is,” she said to the cat, “not turning up at the wedding, without a word, is odd.”

  She had run into Daniel at the post office the day she’d closed the library for the summer, around the time Mrs. Bowen had said he’d left. He’d told her then that he had a speech prepared for the reception. “A few impromptu words,” he’d said, and his eye had flickered in what would have been a wink if he was the kind of person who winked.

  At his house she had only looked for him, not for explanations. Now she remembered the coffee cup on the counter, half full with a swirl of murky cream on top, and the sour milk and moldy bread Mrs. Bowen found. Daniel wouldn’t go on an impulsive holiday leaving unwashed dishes and food to spoil.

  It hurt a bit that everyone had dismissed her uneasiness about Daniel’s welfare. She had seen that happen to other women—legitimate concerns waved away because they’d reached a certain age without marrying, unspoken needs and fluctuating hormones blamed for their apparent fussing. She was only thirty-two, though, and half the time her relatives treated her as if she was fifteen. Was it the same in the city, or was it only in small places like this that it took marriage to make someone real in other people’s eyes?

  Everyone is a pair now, except for Grandma and Mom and me. The thought had never occurred to her before. That was the trouble with weddings, with red-letter days in general. They disturbed the contented flow of things.

  Tomorrow, after lunch since it was Sunday, she would ask Mrs. Bowen to let her into Daniel’s house again. If she could find his address book she could contact some of his relatives. With any luck one of them would know where he’d gone.

  THE AIRBUS GOT INTO Pearson International from the Bahamas at eight in the morning. At the start of business hours, he picked up a couple of white, no-wrinkle shirts, replenished his supply of batteries—laptop, cell phone and camera—and made arrangements to pick up a car that evening. By noon he was at a lunch meeting, looking out at the SkyDome and wishing there was time to see a Blue Jays game.

  The subject on the minds of everyone around the table was the recent discovery of a crash site in northern Manitoba. In 1979 a bush plane had disappeared between Flin Flon and Winnipeg. The plane, a deHavilland Beaver, and the pilot, a D-Day vet and ex-cop by the name of Frank Carruthers, were both considered absolutely reliable. Carruthers had done his preflight check, studied the weather charts, filed his flight pla
n, then taken off and was never seen again.

  Last month a group on a fly-in fishing trip had found the plane’s remains tangled in some dead trees on a lakeshore. What concerned the people in this room was that its cargo—fifteen gold bars—was gone.

  Fifteen bars identified by a refiner’s stamp and number, each weighing a thousand ounces. It was more than the mine usually sent out at once. A series of blizzards and a bad flu season had caused the cancellation of a couple of planned flights. Somewhere out there, in the muskeg or underbrush or transformed into gleaming ankle bracelets, was nearly seven million dollars’ worth of gold.

  He opened the map he’d bought at the airport. Most of Manitoba’s population was concentrated in a band along the south of the province. The central and northern areas looked almost empty. Lakes, rivers, forests, bogs, tundra. It was easy to see how even something as large as a plane could go unfound for so long.

  “Same arrangement as usual,” said the woman at the head of the table. “Expenses and ten percent of what you recover.”

  “My partner is already in place.” He refolded the map, leaving it open to show the area northwest of Winnipeg. “We’ll do what we can.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  AFTER THE SUN SET, he could hardly stay awake. Driving alone in the dark down a nearly straight, nearly abandoned highway felt almost like crawling into bed. The dotted yellow line disappearing under the car every microsecond didn’t help at all.

  He turned off the air conditioner and rolled the windows down. Fresh air felt better, even warm, humid fresh air. It smelled like hay. Hay made him think of farmers. Farmers made him think of farmers’ daughters. That took him right back to where he had started the day.

  Not happy.

  He should be happy. The information he needed was waiting for him. The dark corners and unanswered questions connected with the job didn’t bother him. Not even the remote chance of success bothered him. Long odds made things interesting; the potential payoff made them worthwhile. His problem was with the personal aspects of what he had agreed to do. If he was going to start getting fastidious about things like that he’d have to look for a new line of work.

  The headlights picked out a sign on the side of the highway. Three Creeks.

  Getting to his destination always gave him a shot of adrenaline. He felt alert again. The clock on the dash said one-twenty.

  He slowed the car and turned onto the gravel road.

  THE MORNING BEGAN with an argument over Eleanor’s invitation to tea. Julia didn’t want to go, not even if it was just the five women, not even if her mother particularly wanted her to be there.

  “All they do is sit around and talk.” She poured herself a glass of juice, took a piece of toast and jam from the plate in the middle of the table and opened a cookbook.

  “It won’t be long, Mom. An hour.”

  “You go. I’ll make dinner.”

  “You will?” Those words never failed to make Emily’s neck muscles tighten. The tension wasn’t reasonable. From time to time she came home from work to find dinner simmering or roasting, the table set, the house standing. “Something cold would be fine.”

  Julia didn’t answer. One minute they were having a conversation and the next, they weren’t. Drawbridge up, moat flooded. Emily was never sure when the barrier was erected, before her mother heard or before she was expected to respond to an unwelcome idea. It couldn’t be involuntary, not all the time.

  “Did you know John’s coming for a visit?”

  The drawbridge eased open. “Who?”

  “John Ramsey.”

  Julia turned a whole sheaf of pages and landed in the pasta section. “Never liked him much.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Pasta primavera. I have peas. I have tomatoes.”

  Emily waited, wondering if her mother would say more about John. They had dated all through grade eleven and twelve. She’d never expressed an opinion about him then.

  “Why didn’t you like him, Mom?”

  “Who?”

  “John Ramsey.”

  Julia went to the cupboard. “It should be fettuccine. We never have fettuccine.”

  “Mom?”

  “You need those wider noodles to hold the sauce.”

  It didn’t matter if her mother hadn’t liked John, or why. He’d moved to the city and Emily had stayed home. If he’d wanted to take over his parents’ farm they’d probably be married now.

  Julia was on her knees, buried up to her waist in the cupboard. Emily could hear containers being moved back and forth. Boxes began to appear on the floor.

  “When I go to town after lunch I’ll get fettuccine.”

  “There’s no need to go to town.”

  “I’m going anyway, back to Daniel’s.”

  “Get some of that bread, then, the square white bread.” Julia didn’t like the taste or texture, but she liked the way the sides lined up straight for sandwiches.

  While her mother put the boxes back in the cupboard, Emily began to tackle the housework that had piled up during the week. As she was finishing the laundry and about to start making lunch, her cousin Martin called.

  “Grandma told me you were asking about Daniel. You can stop worrying.”

  “He’s back?”

  “Looks like it. I went through town late last night, saw the light on over his door.”

  The uneasiness that had clung to her all of yesterday still didn’t let go. “You’re sure it wasn’t one of his neighbors?”

  “I’m sure. His Christmas lights were on, too.”

  The thought of those bright colors sparkling through a hot July night made Emily smile. A couple of winters ago Daniel had decided he’d had his fill of climbing ladders. Now he left the lights attached to the eaves all year.

  “Have you heard the other news?” Martin asked.

  “News? No.” She assumed he meant local news, family news. “What happened?”

  “You’re seeing Mom and Sue later, right? I’ll let them tell you.”

  “Martin—”

  But he had already hung up.

  AN ALMOST NEW silver-gray Accord with Ontario plates sat in Daniel’s driveway. He wouldn’t have taken off without telling anyone just to buy a car, would he?

  Emily rang the side door bell. She had raised her hand to ring a second time when the door opened. A stranger stood in front of her.

  “Yes?”

  He was tall, with a trim, hard build. In spite of the summer heat, he wore suit trousers and a dress shirt that looked formal even with the sleeves rolled up and the collar unbuttoned. He needed a shave, and he looked as if he’d missed at least three nights’ sleep. It gave him a grainy, world-weary appearance that made her heart beat a little faster.

  She stood straighter, her grade one teacher’s daily admonition popping into her mind from wherever it had stayed dormant all these years. Shoulders back, chest out, tummy in. “I was hoping to see Daniel. Is he home?”

  “I can give him a message.”

  It wasn’t a very informative answer. The man didn’t even smile. Emily felt as welcome as a door-to-door canvasser. “I’d like to talk to him myself. Is he here?”

  Dark-gray eyes looked back at her. Did he really need to think it over? Daniel was either here or he wasn’t. Her concern flooded back. “Has something happened to him?”

  “He’s been called away.”

  “He’s all right, though?”

  “He’s fine.”

  Emily didn’t want to play tug-of-war with the man over one simple piece of information. If his clothes weren’t enough of a clue, his tone made it clear he was from the city. No one used to small-town life would sound so distant when company called, not even when that company dropped in without notice.

  She used the firm expression that usually got children’s attention when they were misbehaving and waited expectantly. Finally he added, “Daniel asked me to look after the place while he’s gone. He should be back in about a week if you
want to try again.”

  The door began to close.

  She couldn’t believe it. He’d been so cool through the whole exchange, no more than polite. Not even polite. Stiff and distant and unhelpful, all with a sort of repressed energy that she found a little unnerving. “If you’re talking to him, would you tell him I came by? Emily Moore—”

  The door, half-shut, opened again. “Otherwise known as Robb?”

  For a moment his eyes had some life to them. Why did he care if she was a Robb? “According to people around here.” She smiled tentatively. “Not on any legal documents.”

  “My uncle mentioned you. I’m Matthew Rutherford.”

  A nephew! The name didn’t ring a bell.

  He leaned against the doorjamb. Maybe he was feeling more relaxed now that they were introduced. But if he was more relaxed, why was she still standing outside?

  Daniel would be disappointed if his nephew didn’t get a proper welcome. “I hope you’ll enjoy your stay in Three Creeks. You’ve come a long way to watch the house. Not many nephews would be so generous!”

  “I suppose it depends on the uncle.”

  “That’s true. I’d do just about anything for Daniel, and we’re not even related.”

  Her comment was met with a blank stare.

  Emily sighed. She tried to catch it before it was out, but she was too late. “The last time I talked to him he was expecting to go to my cousin’s wedding this past Friday. He must have changed his mind suddenly. Did he go to Ontario?”

  “He didn’t mention a wedding.”

  Another non-answer. Daniel wouldn’t mind her knowing where he’d gone. She tried a subject the nephew might find less personal. “Have you met your neighbors yet?”

  “You’re the first person I’ve seen.”

  “Mrs. Bowen—” she pointed over her shoulder “—next door, is a dear friend of your uncle’s. Once she knows you’re here and alone—oh! Are you alone?”